When I was a boy in the late 1930s, I was deeply impressed by the
size, the depth, and the diversity of my country, (I almost wrote
divinity) and the grandeur of the New York City in which I was fortunate
enough to live. I went to "pledge allegiance" public schools, we wore
white shirts and neckties on assembly days, played stick ball in the
less than crowded streets, and saved rubber-bands and tin foil for the
World War II war effort. There were no bad foods; a hot fudge sundae, a
banana split or a Charlotte Russe (a whipped cream and sponge cake
concoction resting on a circle of white cardboard is recalled tearfully
by those old enough to remember) was a foretaste of heaven, not a
guaranteed clogging of the arteries. Bypass surgery was the destruction
of old, decent middle class neighborhoods by the compulsive highway
builder Robert Moses. In school I was taught devotion to every
president from Washington to FDR, and particularly to Lincoln who in my
child's mind freed the slaves with the uncomplicated fervor of Moses
bringing down the Ten Commandments from Mr. Sinai. I was, and I
remain, proud to be American. But the America that owned my boyhood
pride -- for all its failings -- seemed a far larger place than I find
myself living in today. We are, I fear, living in an incredible
shrinking nation.

As an adult when I began to earn a fair living I recall complaining
to my mother (she who had survived four wars beginning with World War I)
that my taxes were much too high, and in those days they sure were
high. In her practical fashion she asked, "Do you think the streets
clean themselves? Do you think the police would protect us if they
couldn't support their families? Not to mention the firemen and the
school-teachers. Sure there's wasted money. We live in an imperfect
world. But be glad you can afford to pay taxes. They pay for everything
that makes your life comfortable and safe." That ended my first and
last financial tax whine, at least to my loving and pragmatic mother.

But something has been lost, and I hope not irrevocably, in recent
days. Let's start with the new Tea Party. If I recall my American
history our first and best tea party, that Boston one, was not just
about paying high taxes. It was about paying taxes to England without
having proper representation for our colonies. It was about a basic
right of self-determination, not about the glorification of selfishness.
And those Founding Fathers prized the very literacy that will be lost
should we further cut back on education in order to save a few bucks,
and find ourselves and our children living in a Palin reality TV show of
ignorance and moose hunting.

What has happened to the presidency? George Bush, father and son,
managed to shrink the country to the size of a gated, restricted country
club, but Barack Obama, to whom we looked for a new expansion and
definition of America, has issued more "mea culpas" than your average
priest hears in a weekly confession. And we can't blame it all on bad
PR. Mr. President, you are so much better than you admit, and so much
worse than your supporters allow. By overestimating your friends and
underestimating your enemies you face a perilously tough two years
ahead. Not for you but for the country, and for my very small but very
dear grandchildren. Personally, I don't care much about your political
fate. Yes, I like you the way I like any friend who is charming but has
disappointed me, but I do care about the fate of our country. Yes,
jobs, jobs, jobs, is the mantra that every smart politician recites each
morning, but the failure went beyond the difficult problem of creating
jobs in an economy driven into the ditch by eight years of Republican
drunken driving. It was the very timidity of your decisions that leaves
you where you are today, admired by some, but a conundrum of others.

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Who the devil thought up the great idea of bailing out the banks
without getting a signed commitment from them to lend to small business?
Who asked them to fix mortgages without flexing some governmental
financial muscle? Who thought that a complicated health-care plan that
did not allow for a single payer provision would not confuse the entire
population? And who could ever believe that the Republican minority who
thought nothing of shouting "Liar" at you in a State of the Union
Address would reach across the aisle for compromise and amity? And
with a John Roberts, who prevaricated his way into his Court
confirmation by claiming that he was all for abiding by existing laws,
not judicial activism, how could you expect better from his Supreme
Court who has delivered our democracy to the graveyard of the deep
pockets of the Rupert Murdochs and David Kochs of the world? These men
are not just protectors of their vast wealth and privilege, but in their
polities deniers of global warming and its destruction of the very air
we breathe and the water we drink.

You are a very smart man, but today I can only see a feckless
innocence mixed with that intelligence. We voted for one who would know
the uses of power for the people and would stretch that power with bold
moves, but we found instead we had voted for the great compromiser, our
own Henry Clay. There's time. Not much. But before our economy, and
worse, our ideals, are diminished to the size of a Third World country
by the likes of the Orange Avenger and his trickle down congressional
cohorts, (trickle down being the happy drooling of those who see
themselves as the winners of their class warfare) would you kindly show
some muscle when you roll up those proverbial sleeves? America may not
be in a Depression but it sure is depressed. And that's when true
leadership counts. Enough with the charm offensive. Happy talk with
Oprah and the good ladies of The View is just that, happy talk:
it's time for a little street fighting. John Adams stood up against
the Boston mob when he defended a British soldier. Lincoln understood
that there could be no real compromise with the slave states. Courage is
in our DNA. So start the climb back by dismissing insiders who are
outsiders to most of America, and find some smart, tough guys who will
stick it to the bad guys and let America grow back to its large,
expansive, generous size which welcomes newcomers, and demands economic
justice for all. A tall order. But anything smaller is sure to fail.